Out to Lunch

The Farce Side

James Corden, hailed as a comic genius for his hilarious performance in One Man, Two Guvnors, the National Theatre’s delightfully low—verylow—farce on Broadway, met me for lunch at the Mandarin Oriental hotel’s Asiate restaurant, with its breathtaking view overlooking Central Park and the Upper West Side. “So, how does it feel to be the toast of the town?” I asked.

“Well, it’s lovely,” he replied. “It’s great! But I’m trying to take it all with a bag of salt.”

“That’s a lot of salt.”

“I don’t think a pinch is enough.”

Mr. Corden, the lord of misrule onstage, is low-key, charming, and slightly disheveled offstage. At 33, he looks much younger than he is. Six years ago, he appeared on Broadway as one of the eight British schoolboys in Alan Bennett’s The History Boys. He was the pudgy one who played the class clown. Today, when he makes his entrance in One Man, Two Guvnors, he’s greeted by excited applause.

“There’s nothing nicer than getting a round of applause for turning up for work!” he said. “It’s amazing! I start work and people clap. Do you know what I mean? And then they stand up and clap at the end!”

When I met him one evening after the show, however, he wasn’t too happy. A man seated in the front row hadn’t managed to laugh the entire night. “He was having the most horrid time! Not even a smile. What I call the ‘bankers’ in the show—surefire, big laughs—nothing! And the more people laughed, the angrier he got. He was like a heavy-metal fan at a Justin Bieber concert. It was incredibly off-putting.”

But why would he let one sourpuss among the happy audience trouble him? “It’s ludicrous,” he admitted, “but that’s the crazy thing about most performers.” They remember the bad reviews.

James Corden was raised in Buckinghamshire, southeast England, the son of Salvation Army members. His father is a Christian-book salesman, his mother a social worker. “To be honest, I grew up in the most loving environment I could imagine,” he offered. “It felt like you had a parachute on.”

A waiter hovered. “I know exactly what I want,” Mr. Corden said, ordering the halibut with miso broth, along with a Diet Coke. “Can’t go wrong with that.”

He doesn’t drink? “You can’t when you’re doing a show. But I don’t really enjoy a glass of wine. I enjoy, like, seven glasses of wine.”

“Can you remember the first time you made anyone laugh?”

“I was three and it was during my younger sister’s christening and I was lifted up to stand on a chair so I could see. I looked out at the congregation of about 30 or 40 people, but to me it seemed like thousands. And I started to do little dances on the chair and pull faces and turn round under my legs—and everyone burst out laughing! Even the vicar was laughing. And I can vividly remember something clicked and thinking, This feels amazing!”

Unusually for a British actor, he didn’t go to university—not even to Oxford or Cambridge. (The only exams he passed at school were in drama and English.) He’s had no formal training in the theater. His first professional job came when, aged 17, he appeared for a year as a peasant in Martin Guerre, the West End musical set in 16th-century France. “I had one line, three words.”

“What was the line?”

“‘Roast the meats!’”

“You gave it your all?”

“Oh, I went for it! I gave it everything I had.”

Lunch was served in style. “Here we go!” said Mr. Corden. “This is all happening now.”

“Enjoy!” said the waiter.

A stranger soon came over to the table. “Excuse me. Can I interrupt? Love you in Gavin & Stacey. We get it in New Zealand. Fantastic!”

“Thank you very, very much,” James Corden replied, and meant it.

More or less unknown in America until One Man, Two Guvnors, he’s been a star in England since Gavin & Stacey, his award-winning BBC comedy series, became essential viewing. He co-wrote it with his co-star Ruth Jones. “I sat down and thought, Right! I’m going to write my own show because the only role I was being offered was the guy in a film who delivers a TV set to Hugh Grant.”

The venerable Telegraph recently described Corden as an actor who’s “almost a national treasure.” The qualifying “almost” suggests he’s too young for the exalted role, or he’s on probation. Not long ago, he suffered a swift, tabloid fall from grace during a perfect storm of bad decisions—embarrassing appearances on award shows (including an on-air spat with a boorish Patrick Stewart), a panned TV series, and a third-rate movie (Lesbian Vampire Killers).

He looked a little sheepish. “I just got lost for a while, you know? You can’t go out every night till seven a.m. and expect to produce good work. And I didn’t. That first flush of fame and success is so giddying. I’d been in a relationship for nine years. I’d never really moved away from home before. And now I was single. I was being chased by paparazzi. I just embraced every single intoxicating bit of it. It was as if I had my college years in public in a very condensed amount of time. And I’m pleased to have experienced it, and I’m pleased it isn’t my life anymore.”

His girlfriend, Julia, was with him in New York, along with their one-year-old son, Max. (They are to marry in England when the run of One Man, Two Guvnors is done.) “Look at this picture she sent me of him,” he said, offering his cell phone. “They’re having lunch together nearby. Look at this. He’s a beauty, isn’t he?”

He sure is! He and Max go for walks together in Central Park or splash around in a nearby pool.

“By the way, do you know how to change a nappy?” I wondered.

“How can you call yourself a dad if you don’t?” he replied, forsaking a tempting dessert of caramelized apple and cinnamon ice cream.